Ive been working on a new 2.15CE based setup for the Puppy Cybercafe, but have been unable to roll it out for wider testing because Firefox has a major bug with Crashing on Flash sites, including hotmail, youtube, ebay etc. Although this has already been documented here, here, and here, the instructions are very hard to follow for new puppies, and for me at least dont seem to work.

Certainly in our local area, not having access to these sites means that "The internet doesnt work", in terms of our users. Firefox is the mainstay of browsers and people are familiar with it. I can understand it not being included with the default puppies for space reasons, but any kind of permanent setup would need it as far as our user are concerned, with flash9 and javascript. I understand that (for the moment) these are closed source, and this is what is causing the problems as bugs in them cannot be rectified. Ive had no problems using flash 9 on our older 2.02ce and edupup (2.11 based) setups, so I can only conclude this problem only effects newer versions.

I think what needs to be done is a petget, dotpup or .sfs file, already preconfigured with Java, Flash9 and the flash bug fix already set up. This would make it easy for newbies to install using a graphical installer program or similar, without having to copy files around, edit them or enter the command line. Would someone more puppy-savvy than me (i.e. most of you!) please be kind enough to build a long term and usable solution to this vexing problem...THANK YOU!!!!!_________________Puppy Linux's Mission

i think the problem exists with other distros too ... in any case, setting the plugins path variable seems to work around the problem, it just needs to point to the plugins path directory where Firefox is installed ... the trouble is that Firefox can be installed anywhere, and for that matter, the directory could have any name

for example, i have Firefox installed on /mnt/hda11/firefox2/ ... so if i start Firefox this way, i don't seem to have problems with crashing:

a bugfix installer could search the file system for, for example, libnullplugin.so, and maybe reject files that are in a path that contains the word "seamonkey", and maybe try to find the file in a path containing the word "firefox", etc etc, but there would be no guarantee that the correct path to the correct plugins dir would be found in every case

Would a possible solution be to make a Firefox package with the fixes, flash9 and Java already in it? This way the installer would be aware of the install path and could patch the flash files accordingly._________________Puppy Linux's Mission

it probably would not be necessary to include Flash and/or Java in the same package, although that could be done

From what I have seen, flash 9 and Javascript are definetely "must haves" in any serious browsing machine, therefore it would make sense to have the whole lot as one package, setup to "just work" with a .pet (preferable) or a dotpup or .sfs. Ive never actually created a puppy package before (or got flash9/java/firefox to play happily together in 2.15ce - just a few "false dawns" after a few long nights trying!).

From what I understand (which is very little), a sfs is simply a read-only bunch of files with their directories that is automatically added to the puppy files and directories when it is placed in the same directory as the pup_save.2fs file. I dont have the faintest idea about a dotpup, but I hear that a .pet is basically a zipped up file/directory list with an install script, and a list of dependant libraries that must be installed in order for it to work. For ease of use by beginners, I think a .pet package that would work with the petget autoinstaller would be the easiest option.

I would really appreciate someone making a .pet package or similar of firefox/flash9/java, or at least some easy instructions on how to go about making one myself. This is one thing that could definitely do with an easy fix to be made available._________________Puppy Linux's Mission

I understand 2.15ce is an added onto 2.14? Things should be roughly the same? Things are already pretty far ahead with the 2.15 install (ITS SOOOO PRETTY!!!!). Its basically just this thats holding back the rollout._________________Puppy Linux's Mission

basically, you can install whatever applications you like, where ever you like

then make a compressed file with the various files in your applications ... for example, if you install Firefox in a directory called "firefox" in /usr/lib and and you put the Flash plugins in /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/ and you install Java in a directory called "jre" in /usr, you could do this :

cd /
tar czvf firefox.tgz /usr/lib/firefox/ /usr/jre/

now to install the firefox.tgz file on other machines, you can do something like this if the file is put in /

cd /
tar xf firefox.tgz

or if the file was put in /tmp:

cd /
tar xf /tmp/firefox.tgz

dotpups and dotpets work much the same way, though there may be things happening like "registering" so it shows up as a package in the manager's package list

you might want to also add files like /usr/local/bin/defaultbrowser and /usr/share/applications/Firefox-web-browser.desktop, etc etc

i don't know of many bugs in 216 ... for a frugal install, the pup_save file is not unmounted cleanly when Puppy shuts down, but there is an automatic fsck on boot which usually fixes the file system if necessary ... ls is aliased to 'ls --color' in /etc/profile, which won't work, it can be put in .bashrc but if SHELL=/bin/sh the ENV variable would need to be set too ... that is a minor bug ... some movies crash my system, but i think that is mismatched video libraries, and also applies to older versions of Puppy 2.x ... rxvt shuts down slowly, but that is because rxvt does not work right with the 2.6 kernel, i use aterm instead, it does not have that problem ... if you use unionfs it creates many unnecessary .wh. whiteout files, just use aufs, (i don't think Puppy 214 has aufs)

i can't think of any bugfixes to put in a service pack, other than the ls --color one ... the problem with unmounting the pup_save file cleanly should be fixed

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